The NPTEL project, which comprises of seven IITs and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), has launched an online course in Programming, Data Structures and Algorithms. This is a free course and is open to all college students in any engineering or science steam in India. The online course is powered by Google's open-source MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) platform called Course Builder and it runs on App Engine and Compute Engine.

This is a golden opportunity for students to learn from some of the best Computer Science faculty in the country. Registration for the course is open until 10-March-2014. The first set of lectures and assignments have been released on 3-March.

See this introductory video from various organizations involved in this course.

After the course, an in-person, proctored exam can be taken by paying a nominal fee. Those who pass the exam will get a certificate.

We are honored to be a part of this initiative which aims to make high quality education accessible to a large number of students in India. NPTEL has been recording and uploading lecture videos since last several years. Their YouTube channel has more than 13,000 videos and has crossed 100 million video views.